


Never Thought I'd See the Day

by BackyardPodcast



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Basira is mentioned like Once but not enough to tag, First Kiss, Fluff, Getting Together, Literal Sleeping Together, M/M, Not because there's only one, Set in Episodes 159-160 | Scottish Safehouse Period (The Magnus Archives), Sharing a Bed, Tenderness, The lightest amount of angst, no they making the active choice which is much sweeter, they are just in love okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-14 23:07:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28928535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BackyardPodcast/pseuds/BackyardPodcast
Summary: It's Jon that takes Martin's hand to pull him out of the Lonely, and he doesn't let go once they're out. Martin doesn't let go either.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 18
Kudos: 154





	Never Thought I'd See the Day

Stepping out from the Lonely is both opening the door into the first snow of the season and coming inside from a blizzard. New, loud stimuli hit Martin like a bite of winter wind; this world is bright and deep and has things in it other than sand and waves and fog. But it’s also warm, and he hadn’t realized how cold he was until the sun’s rays began to leech the chill from his skin.

It’s early morning when they leave the Lonely. The sun just barely breaks over the horizon, but even that’s enough to begin wiping away the mist that still clings to him. They’re still on a beach; however, there’s a jogger off in the distance, and a boardwalk with employees prepping their stores behind big glass windows, and no fog, and Martin knows they’re not in the Lonely anymore. He doesn’t know where they are though, so he looks to Jon.

Jon… Jon, who is holding his hand. Jon, whose palm is warmer than the morning light and who has been keeping him warm since before they even left the Lonely. Jon, who Martin had lost and grieved and who’d come back anyway. Who’d come and found him in the Lonely.

And then Jon supplies, without being asked, “We’re near Gravesend, about ten miles out of London.”

Martin nods. He doesn’t know why they’re here in particular, if the similarity in setting allowed for an easier exit or if Jon chose here on purpose or if it was random. He’s mostly glad they haven’t gone too far.

“Can we go home?” Martin asks, though he knows the answer. Jon had already promised to do just that.

“I’ll find us a taxi,” Jon says, and it sounds like another promise. Martin doesn’t even think to doubt that he will.

The driver gives them a once over in the rearview mirror, but luckily, he doesn’t comment on their bedraggled state. The taxi stays silent for their ride, and Jon doesn’t let go of Martin, not even to get into the car. Instead, they both board on the same side, with each gripping the other.

As the sun slowly climbs into the sky, Martin watches the rays illuminate the people they pass. After the full shroud of the Loney, where he hadn’t expected, hadn’t  _ wanted _ to see another soul ever again, he doesn’t know what to do with himself now that he’s back. Even now, they seem so far away.

But then Jon knocks his shoulder into Martin’s.

Neither say much during the drive. There’s so much to say, yes, but they’re both exhausted, and what they need to say doesn’t really belong on a tired taxi ride.

When they get out of the car, it’s outside of Martin’s apartment building, and he wonders for how long Jon has known his address. Did he look it up after Jane Prentiss’ siege? Did he just Know it when telling the driver where to go? Or did he learn it sometime in between?

Martin digs in his pockets, and he sighs in relief when he finds that his keys haven’t been lost in all that has happened. However, it does take him a couple of tries to actually unlock his apartment door with his shaking hand. He doesn’t let go of Jon’s hand, doesn’t even think to let go to use the new spare to steady himself. He doesn’t think to let go and not bring Jon with him into the flat. He doesn’t want to.

“Would you-- Could you stay?” Martin asks.

“Always,” Jon says. 

It’s early in the morning, and the world is waking up. But Martin doesn't want any of it. Exhaustion and cold has seeped into his bones, and he doesn’t have the energy to do anything but drag Jon into his bedroom. Because after hours in the Lonely and a day of walking through the tunnels and months of isolation, Martin is tired. And he doesn’t want to be alone again, not yet. And he doesn’t think Jon wants to be either.

So it’s easy to continue to hold onto Jon, to tug him into bed and under the covers with Martin, especially when in lieu of protests, Jon wraps an arm around Martin’s chest.

A few hours from now, when they wake up, they’ll have to talk through everything that just happened. But for now, Jon is so warm, pressed against Martin’s side, and Martin lets his eyelids slide close.

The sound of music wakes Martin. It’s a cheerful little tune, played on a marimba. It takes him a moment to realize it’s a phone ringing. When he pries his eyes open, he finds that Jon is sitting up, back against the headboard, and he’s just pressed his phone to his ear. “Basira?” he asks, and it’s not a question of the caller as it is a status update request. Martin doesn’t know the scene Jon left behind to follow him into the Lonely, but he does know that Peter had released the creature that had replaced Sasha onto the Archives. It was likely not a pretty picture. 

A voice, presumably Basira’s, comes through the phone, and Martin’s sleep-addled brain can’t understand it through its low volume. Instead, he notices how his arms are still wrapped around Jon’s waist, how right it feels to wake up to Jon. He’d never thought he’d get to have this. He doesn’t know if he’ll get to have it again either.

Jon talks into the phone, and his voice comes out agitated, three steps below frantic. But Martin doesn’t say anything yet, doesn’t ask; it would be rude to interrupt. Instead, he waits until Jon has finished the conversation and hangs up. 

Only then does he press, “What’s going on?”

“I- When I went into the tunnels, there was-- Trevor Herbert and Julia Montauk were attacking, and so was Not-Sasha, and Daisy--” Jon’s tripping over his words, and Martin does his best to put them together in a way that makes sense. Jon starts again, “The police have gotten to the Institute. They’ll be looking for me soon. So will the hunters.”

Martin’s arms tighten around Jon’s waist, almost subconsciously.

“Basira offered up a place to hide out. Apparently, Daisy has a safehouse in Scotland, I need to stop at my apartment, and then that’s… that’s probably where I’ll go.” He pulls himself from Martin’s embrace and slides out of bed.

Where… where  _ he’ll _ go. Just him. 

Martin’s arms are already cold from his absence.

“You’re leaving? Again?” He pulls himself up, and he can only watch Jon slide on his shoes for a moment before he’s out of bed too.

“It’s not safe for me to stay.” Jon stands up and when he meets Martin’s eyes, his expression says he didn’t expect Martin to be at his side already. “I can’t put y-- put anyone else in danger by staying.”

Martin stares into Jon’s deep brown eyes, traces the many scars on his face. He sucks in a breath, then says, “Okay.”

“Okay?” Jon’s watching him too; their faces are inches away from each other. If he hadn’t been looking, Martin might have missed the way a flitter of something like regret or disappointment appears on his face before disappearing a millisecond later. But he is looking, oh so very much.

Martin places a hand on Jon’s jaw, rubbing his thumb along his cheekbone. He doesn’t miss how Jon presses his face ever so slightly into the touch. “As long as you know I’m coming with.”

He doesn’t decide this because he’d miss Jon more than life itself. He doesn’t decide to come because after over a year of drifting and being apart, he couldn’t handle losing Jon again. He knows that letting Jon go hurts. He knows because he’s already done it and felt it and been hurt by it. But he could do it again, if he needed to, if  _ Jon _ needed him to, because giving to others is what he’s done his whole life. However, It’s the thought of Jon being all alone, isolated in a place he’s never been, that makes him decide, because he knows about being Lonely and no part of him will allow Jon to fall into it ever again.

Jon pauses, and Martin thinks he’s about to protest. Instead, Jon turns his face into Martin’s palm and presses his lips against its heel. “Okay.”

Martin’s breath catches at the touch; then it’s his turn to ask, “Okay?”

Jon hums his affirmation. “Let’s get you packed, and then we’ll go grab stuff from mine.”

That’s what they do. While Martin grabs his suitcase and begins to toss in clothes, Jon dips in and out of the room, dropping off other necessities like his toothbrush, a comb, and even a few cans of tea. Martin had forgotten he still had tea in the apartment.

Then they’re in another taxi and at Jon’s flat, where their roles reverse. Jon gathers his clothes, and Martin tries to think what else to grab. He mostly wanders around opening random cupboards and taking what’s not easily replaceable. When he finds the small kitchen table littered with statements and tapes, he grabs it all, knowing that statements will be scarce to come by wherever they’re going.

He finds… it’s a curved bone, and Martin sinks with the realization that its human rib. He’d heard about Jon trying to create an anchor for himself but… to see a literal piece of his skeleton outside of his body…. Martin packs the rib too. Just in case.

Before he fully realizes it, they’ve grabbed what they can, and Jon and Martin are on a train heading for Scotland. It’s sudden, and drastic, and there is no way that, even yesterday, he would have guessed where he would be today, but Jon is holding his hand again, and they’re sitting, sides pressed together, on the train, and Martin feels safer than he has in a long time.

Of all the things Martin had expected living in a murder safehouse to be, peaceful hadn’t been one of them.

The cabin contains only the bare bones and a thin layer of dust that covers everything when they arrive. There’s a gas stove, and a fridge from the 80’s, and a tiny loveseat with missing springs, and a queen size bed. When he sees that last item, he wonders why Daisy didn’t just get a twin. Then, he remembers that Basira knew about this safehouse, and he wonders if this cottage has been used for something other than evading law enforcement. He hopes so.

When they arrive at the cabin, it’s close to midnight, and it’s all they can do to bring their stuff inside and change into pyjamas. Now that his mind is clearer, part of Martin worries about the singular bed, about sleeping next to Jon, but then it’s Jon pulling him under the covers, and that part of his mind quiets. 

Though their faces are pointing towards each other, just inches apart, they’ve turned the lights off, and Martin can’t see Jon. He knows he’s still there, because he reaches out and wraps his arm around Jon’s waist. Jon hums happily at the embrace, and then he’s snaking his own hands up to rest on Martin’s chest.

“Thank you,” Jon whispers, as though afraid of interrupting the silence, “for coming with.”

Martin murmurs back, “We’ve been really stupid, for a long time.” This draws a laugh, a wonderful, soft, gorgeous laugh, from Jon, and Martin can’t help but join him. “But I don’t think I would’ve forgiven myself if I was stupid enough to not go with you again.”

And though he has Jon in his arms and his breath on his neck, though they’re sharing a bed after ten hours on a train where they’d barely let go of each other, everything feels like glass. He doesn’t want to risk going too fast and shattering everything they have here. So Martin doesn’t say more, doesn’t tell Jon of all the emotions that feel so big after the numb of the Lonely, doesn’t tell him that now that they’re together, they’re  _ together, _ for as long as Jon will allow him to be there.

Instead, he lies still, taking in the warmth that radiates from Jon like a furnace. Then, Jon shifts in Martin’s arms, and his hands inch their way from his chest, tracing up his neck and chin until they cup Martin’s face. Martin’s eyes still haven’t adjusted, so he doesn’t see it coming when Jon presses his lips onto Martin’s. 

It’s a still kiss, barely a kiss at all. Martin barely registers what’s happened before Jon jerks himself away, falling onto his back and out of Martin’s embrace. Apologies tumble out of his mouth all but a second later. “I’m sorry, I thought-- with all holding and the touching, but I guess you did just get out of the Lonely, of course-- and you did say, in the past tense-- This is all my fault, I’m sorry--”

“Jon.  _ Jon.” _ Martin’s brain is still catching up. Jon had kissed him. How many times had he day dreamed of this exact moment, of all the ways it could happen? It didn’t feel real.

But Jon’s still rambling, and now that Martin knows that he can do this, that he’s allowed to do this, it only takes him a second to prop himself up with an arm on either side of Jon and press his mouth down onto that of the man below him.

He can feel Jon’s breath catch underneath him, and then it’s all hands cradling his neck and pulling him closer. 

Martin doesn’t know how long they stay like that, but he knows it’s far too soon when he has to pull away for air. Jon is panting, Martin can feel the puff of his breath on his cheeks, and Jon presses their foreheads together. When Martin falls onto his side, he doesn’t pull away. 

“Thank you for letting me come with,” Martin says the way some people pray at night, peaceful and quiet.

“Always, Martin,” Jon tells him. He rubs his thumbs against Martin’s jaw, which makes Martin’s heart do something funny in his chest. “I don’t… I don’t know how human I am anymore. I know I’ve lost a lot of that. But this--” He moves one hand to press against Martin’s fluttering heart. “--this is the most human part about me. If you’ll have it. Have me.”

And God, Martin knows this. He’s been here since the beginning; he’s seen first hand how much Jon has changed. Hell, he’d packed along how many statements, knowing that they would keep Jon alive and not traumatizing strangers. He’s seen Jon Know things, Compel people, even been Compelled himself. Martin knows that sometimes Jon looks with more than the two eyes in his head, knows that Jon is inextricably linked with feeling fear, knows that Jon would be dead had he not given himself over to the Eye.

But… well, it’s not like Martin’s untouched by the Fears himself. And he loves Jon enough to want every part of him, not just the good.

“I’m not the person I once was,” Martin admits, “which I know isn’t quite the same, but I want this. We’ll make it work.”

And they did.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Title from The Altogether's song "See the Day"
> 
> This has been sitting on my Google docs for months and the only reason it got posted now was because I was texting My best friend about it and we both simultaneously realized it never went up.   
> So, I hope you enjoyed! Please leave a comment and/or kudos if you did, I live for validation!


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